ADP Systems

As required by the Department of Defense (DOD) Authorization Act of 1986, GAO evaluated the DOD methodology and acquisition strategy for selecting and awarding Composite Health Care System (CHCS) contracts.

GAO found that, although DOD has implemented a sound methodology for selecting first-stage vendors to compete for CHCS contracts, there are other aspects of its acquisition strategy that could limit the program's success, namely that: (1) the extended CHCS benchmark test was incomplete and did not include many complex functional requirements; (2) DOD will award the final contract before the selected vendor demonstrates whether the proposed system can function in a military hospital; and (3) DOD will not study all essential site preparation and hardware equipment requirements until after the final award. GAO also found that: (1) under the CHCS benchmark test plan, DOD did not adequately evaluate whether critical functions could be successfully integrated; (2) although DOD believes that it will not be difficult or costly to develop the remaining requirements, thorough system testing is imperative before final production begins or vendor selection is made; (3) even though the extended benchmark test (EBT) must be passed before CHCS software is deployed, CHCS hardware deployment is not contingent upon the successful EBT completion; (4) DOD chose the current test approach and proposed CHCS contract award strategy to maintain a rapid deployment schedule; (5) DOD did not modify CHCS requirements to reflect valid system changes that could have affected the function and cost of CHCS; and (6) the information DOD provided prospective vendors for use in their proposed system designs may have resulted in erroneous estimates.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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